The In Crowd: Reviewing the Butthole Surfers' Audience

ON THURSDAY NIGHT at the 9:30 Club, young and (mostly) old alike turned out to soak in the feel-good vibes of legendary experimental pysch-noise band Butthole Surfers.

While it's safe to say that the entirety of the audience was there for the performance on stage, only a band like the Butthole Surfers has the ability to bring out an audience that's just as entertaining — which is why I'll review the fans and not the Buttholes.

For a band that built its reputation on incendiary live shows in the late '80s and '90s, the Surfers have tamed down their act in recent years. The group's audience appears to have followed suit, too, no doubt due to the fact that the core fans are now well into their 30s and 40s. Many of them relished the chance to "cut loose" like the old days and come in their most contentious attire; sadly, many had long since thrown away their gimp suits and assless chaps and thus had to make do with wearing their most controversial pair of sandals.

Sprinkled throughout the shadowy back reaches of the club were a surprising number of better-dressed closet Surfer fans, too, nervously sipping their drinks in the fear that they might be spotted by their office's mail clerk.

As is to be expected of a band that's been around for nearly 30 years, its audience was littered with the worst kind of concert-goers who prefer to ignore the show itself and instead wistfully and loudly reminisce on shows from the band's prime. One insisted a show he saw in the Buttholes' hometown of San Antonio in 1988 was the best; another said the same about a gig in Baltimore in the early '90s; and another couldn't remember which show he liked the best since he always went to them on drugs. All nodded in agreement.

Younger patrons were sprinkled throughout — though the majority of the youth crowd was onstage as part of Paul Green's School of Rock contingency, which is touring with the Surfers. Half of the mid-20s audience looked prepared to leave on a dime if the Buttholes' '90s radio hit "Pepper" wasn't played in the first 10 minutes, and the other half skewed the numbers by dressing like they were at Lollapalooza '92, muddying which age demographic they should fall into.

The younger crowd's main contribution to the evening was a makeshift mosh pit situated to the right of the stage; it gained momentum during the faster and heavier songs, but quickly fell apart once a man in a long gray ponytail and Eeyore shirt began dancing in the middle.

Of course, just as every band has standout songs, so does every audience. Highlights for the Butthole Surfers' set included a man who looked to be in his late 110s wearing cut-off jean short-shorts and regaling anyone who stood nearby with a diatribe about the band's $25 dollar shirts; another man consistently complained that the mushrooms he bought before the show weren't kicking in yet; and one attractive blonde who nearly brought the house down — simply by being an attractive blonde at a Butthole Surfers show.

Written by Express contributor Paul Vivari
Photos by Kirk R. Tuck/courtesy Butthole Surfers